I purchased St Ives Oatmeal Scrub and Mask earlier this month at Soap.com but it has since become available at Drugstore.com and my best friend recently told me he picked it up at Harmons.

This is a gentle scrub according to St Ives as they have a little exfoliation meter on the back of their products now which displays how gentle, moderate, or deep a scrub the formula is. I can understand the gentle factor as it has quite a refined formula with very small granulates for scrubbing away dead skin. It quite reminds me of Queen Helene’s Cocoa Butter Natural Facial Scrub and even the fresh cocoa butter-like scent smells similar.

You can use this as a mask to soften skin or as a gentle way to exfoliate skin. Personally the mask thing puzzles me as it doesn’t really soften my skin much just sitting around “wearing” it for several minutes. The formula is very creamy and rich but unfortunately like many St Ives products I end up feeling very tight and dry after using it. They do say it can be used 3 to 4 times a week but I tend to use St Ives Facial Scrubs perhaps once every two weeks or even in some cases once a month when I wanna just scrub away all my flaky, dry areas.

Although meant for all skin types I think it’ll work best for oily or combo skin and might just be a bit much for those with drier skin. Or at least that how I felt…!

If you love St Ives Facial Scrubs I’m sure you’ll be quite excited to see two new ones at drugstores this Spring.

FYI: St Ives scrubs are TERRIBLE for your face. The exfoliating particles are jagged and literally tear open your skin on a microscopic level. The best physical exfoliators have rounded beads, not sharp jagged pieces.

I know some people think the silica beads are better for our face, while it may or may not be true, the silica beads are EXTREMELY HARMFUL to our environment and Eco system. Please stop using such products that can damage the ocean, the animals that live in it, and ultimately us.

I think the scrub/mask was made for people with a dryer skin type rather then oily usssually product labeled smoothing or contain oatmeal are ment for dry skin it feels fine on my skin I have extra dry skin too.

The beads in this particular product the exfoliating particles are small, so small impossible to do any damage to your screen. Now the apricot scrub I would say does do damage to your skin. It was extremely harsh I felt like I was washing my face with rocks. But this product is really good for dry/combo skin, especially during the winter time. I love that its more creamy and it didn’t make my face feel tight but I always put a moisturizer on my face not too long after. Great product to me!